bambooXZX's personal blog, mostly dedicated to song lyrics translation from Japanese to English.

About

This site is, basically, my personal place to share things with the Internet. It serves whatever purpose I see fit to post for; the primary purpose, however, is the translation of Japanese lyrics to English, usually for songs related in some way to anime. Do make yourself at home and enjoy whatever it is that you’re looking for.

-bambooXZX

On translation content

The single thing that has the most impact on what I translate is what I happen to be listening to at the time. My primary way of discovering music is through watching anime theme songs and then exploring their artists, so you can expect of lot of that. I also take requests, though I’m not very good at fulfilling them reliably. I don’t restrict myself on song choice at all; if it interests me and it’s something I can do, I’ll do it.

I am a native speaker of (US) English. I’ve been a learner of Mandarin Chinese since birth; while my ability to speak it has degraded with time, I can still read and listen to some extent. I studied Japanese in the classroom for two years, and I’ve been learning from hands-on experience in translating songs ever since. (I also have JLPT N1 certification, but honestly, that doesn’t really mean a whole lot.) I have very slight understanding of Taiwanese due to family and informal classroom lectures.

WARNING! I should note that my grasp on Japanese lyrics was not always as strong as it is now, and I have made some highly embarrassing mistakes in my old works, so be aware that the further back you go, the greater the chance you’ll find a TL with some uncharacteristically egregious error. I have been fixing things up where I find them, but it’s an ongoing process; eventually this will be thoroughly solved. For the present, I’ve been told by at least one qualified outside observer that 2014 seems to be the general point where things get safer and that stuff is usually alright even before, but who knows. …not that I don’t still make mistakes from time to time, but just saying. :V

Using my translations

Feel free to use these lyrics for your own purposes, such as adding them to more specific databases or putting them onto music videos. In general, I would prefer that you credit me (preferably with a link back here) and give me a heads-up; I like to see where my stuff ends up, and I of course take pride in the effort I put into these translations.

One caveat, though: if you want to change any of the wording of the translation, I’d prefer it if you could link to the specific lyrics page, or alternatively don’t name me at all, because I have no desire to claim liability for inaccuracies produced by bad editing. Heck, depending on what this is for, you can try commenting, and maybe I’ll be able to take a look and make sure nothing gets too far off.

Of course, this being the internet, there’s nothing stopping you from disregarding me here, but I hope you can understand.

Retranslating

If you want to try translating my translations to a language other than English or Japanese (or any other source), there’s nothing really stopping you, but I don’t recommend it. There are many issues with doing that, and they can lead to very big problems for material as freeform as song lyrics. One of the main reasons is that when you translate something, you can’t always get all of the meaning that was in the original, and you can’t always avoid adding new meanings that weren’t in the original. If you translate a translation on top of that, you’re missing everything that the previous translator missed, and you’re picking up and transforming things that the previous translator added or transformed – you start getting further and further away from the original meaning, and there will almost definitely be mistakes.

Again, as this is the internet, go ahead if you really feel like it’s what you want to do, but be aware of the pitfalls.

tl;dr yes, you can translate my translations, but it will make me sad

Contact

The best way to reach me is through a comment on this blog, as I check very frequently for those. This page will do for general topics. If you really need a private channel, send email to bambooxzx at gmail and I’ll do my best to get to it.

Thank you so much for the lyrics to You! :D I couldn’t find them for the life of me, so thank you! I’ve put them in a video, and I’ll tell you when I post it if you’d like. :3
Erm, also, I have a request… could you possibly translate Omoi from the Thanks/you album of Higurashi? I’ll get you the kanji if it’ll help.

I actually considered translating that ED, but considering the lyrical structure, I had decided not to, since the translation probably wouldn’t be very coherent. If you want it, though, I’ll do it anyway.

I can see that it would be an interesting song to translate, it has a unique structure to say the least. Honestly, I would really appreciate any effort on your behalf to translate it, even just roughly – it goes way over my head. Knowledge of mahjong terms not required!

This time I want to ask you for permission for share your SFP’s translations (with credits, of course) with other fans of the band in a forum; AHS (initially, it’s a forum about Ayumi Hamasaki, but it has a thread for other bands too, SFP included).

Hey ^^
my name is Mai and I’m from the subbing team Super6stars…we sub videos about Supernova and we are in need of translators…we only have 1 Japanese translator TT^TT
so the progressing is really slow…could u may help us out? u don’t have to join our team…just maby helping us once in a while when u have time…more about us u can get here : http://super6stars.co.nr/
please think about it ^^
u can also contact me at Twitter :http://twitter.com/ChoCo_Mai

Sorry, I don’t at the moment. I figured out how to play by ear, and for some time now I have been unable to create sheet music – for some reason, my scorewriter program of choice no longer agrees with my computer, and I haven’t had the time to find or learn to use another one. I do plan on making it at some point, though.

Hey. First off, I want to thank you for all the great work you’ve done on your SFP project. As a SFP fan, I truly appreciate all the effort you’ve put into translating their songs so faithfully. As they say, おつかれさまでした!

Now, I realize this is probably pretty out of the blue for you, but I’ve been scouring the internet these past days for anything SFP-related, and have come across these links with no way to verify their authenticity. As a fellow SFP, I was wondering if you had any idea about these:

I have nominated your blog for the Liebster Award. If you would like to participate, here are the rules, instructions and questions:http://wp.me/p1ZpEV-6D . But if not, that’s fine; take this nomination as a compliment that we like your blog!

Hey there! I don’t want to be “that person” but the furigana of your title is 竹の葉 たけのは and should read “take no ha” instead of “koto no ha” should it not? I just ask because I’m linking to it in a blog post and I want to make sure I have the blog title right. Thanks!

Oh, don’t worry about it. The blog has never really had a “real” title; “…VOICE” was just the only thing I could think of back when I started this, so I guess that’s the closest thing. Since then, I’ve used the header to test out random ideas at times. 竹ノ葉／ことのは is a play on the tendency of some song lyrics to include furigana that doesn’t represent the regular reading of its kanji. (Examples: http://puu.sh/dsldY/fca4f50976.png, http://puu.sh/dslpc/8e1053d154.png)

Wow that’s really interesting! I didn’t know that about song lyrics, what a cool thing to use in your title! Thanks so much for answering me, and sorry for replying so late, but wanted to make sure you knew I appreciated it :) I mentioned you in this article, if you wanted to check it out and let me know if you’re ok with it: http://www.fluentu.com/japanese/blog/japanese-song-lyrics/

Hi! I just found your blog when I was looking for the lyrics to Taiyou after watching Denpa Teki na Kanojo, and then I saw that you did piano transcriptions and played some pieces by ear in the past. I run a small community of anime pianists on plug.dj, and I pretty much invite anyone who plays the piano and likes anime music, so feel free to drop by and chat with anyone :D A lot of them have their own youtube channels and they’re pretty passionate about this stuff, and you seem to be too, so it would be cool :D Here’s the link: https://plug.dj/4068531347275908551

I look forward to seeing you there sometime if you decide to check it out :)

This could count as my first request actually xD, in case you like how it sounds. There are lots of songs on this series, and, along with kantai collection, both are two of the biggest doujin trends since a while.

So, please let me know if this is ok, for the time being, thank you for your attention :), I’ll be waiting your kindly reply.

Good morning! Actually, I have a Vocaloid request if you would not mind. The title is 夏、夢、蜃気楼 by Gumi. I did not find any translations and then I saw you accepted requests. Thank you for reading this and have a good day!